Our IT director is looking to upgrade the bulk of our hardware by integrating a SAN and a tape library for backups. Our current hardware (2950's) are out of warranty and we would like to go ahead and virtualize those servers along with the rest of our vm's that are running on a r510 and a r710 from dell at the moment. Our first thought was a equallogic ps4100x but that got pricey very quick, so im just wondering what everyone else is running SAN wise and looking for any suggestions? We would prefer Dell as we get a pretty good discount with them.

I have started my research but being relatively new to IT I seem to have more questions than answers at this point,lol.

We would like to have at least 15 vm's and at-least 10-15TB of usable space for snapshots, file shares, a few vdi implementations and email. We currently have 3 switches servicing several patch panels but would also need at least one more switch to help with traffic from an additional SAN correct? Also we would be adding dual 1g ports to our r510 and r710 servers to deal with added traffic. Does this sound right?

You might consider a converged solution like Scale's HC3 to avoid the complexity that comes with a SAN. HC3 offers a highly available, "private cloud" like environment that has fully integrated, scale-out storage. HC3 combines the servers, storage and hypervisor (no extra licensing involved) in a single converged product that is very easy to use.

@John773 not just for snapshots but also for future growth. Currently we are using around 6TB over the last 3 years so I just want to make sure that we have room to expand. Although we might start out smaller and add as needed.

I keep hearing be weary of a SAN, what's the reasoning behind this? We have been working with a consulting agency on adding a SAN to our network, and I know that there motivation is money but I would think that a SAN would be less complicated than a big NAS that is virtualized (will have to look into that). Will also be looking into adding a third higher end server and upping ram and storage on all three servers and running vmware as an alternate plan.

I keep hearing be weary of a SAN, what's the reasoning behind this? We have been working with a consulting agency on adding a SAN to our network, and I know that there motivation is money but I would think that a SAN would be less complicated than a big NAS that is virtualized (will have to look into that). Will also be looking into adding a third higher end server and upping ram and storage on all three servers and running vmware as an alternate plan.

I keep hearing be weary of a SAN, what's the reasoning behind this? We have been working with a consulting agency on adding a SAN to our network, and I know that there motivation is money but I would think that a SAN would be less complicated than a big NAS that is virtualized (will have to look into that). Will also be looking into adding a third higher end server and upping ram and storage on all three servers and running vmware as an alternate plan.

I think sometimes there's a bit too much of a "SAN = Bad" vibe on here when it's not that they're "bad" it's that people often get sold them for the wrong reasons - they aren't a magic bullet and by their very nature they do make for a more complex environment which in turn means that there's more chance of human error or you just being so terrified to touch it that you become dependent on a vendor or reseller.

They aren't magic, and if you have the right scenario they work just great - but for a lot of people that scenario isn't when you've got it sat in a rack a foot away from 2 hosts.

If you can cluster and stretch things out it starts to make more sense IMO.

I'm really suprised at the number of reponses reporting issues with SANs. The SANs I've used have always been stable; however, much time and analysis went into their selection. If you want uptime, I would stick with the big names. If you ever need support, hopefully, there will be engineers who actually know the product.